My local farmer’s market is a joy. Compact and varied, I do most of my weekly food shop there. I know the farmers and producers well by now, and I have a few favourites that I never miss. I know that when I get home to London there will be pumpkins and squash aplenty. I also look forward to visiting my local farmer and seeing what he has got. The meat and the cuts vary week on week based on what comes from the farm. Sometimes he has pork cheek, the whole jowl, and I love to roast those or stick them on the BBQ. He always has veal, minced and escalope, brisket, steaks, and sublime minced beef. I know that whatever he has, it will be delicious, it always is.

I bought these spiral sausages from him before I left for Australia and their twistiness made me think of nothing else but round bread. I wanted to embed those sausages in a flatbread and make a meal of it. Brunch, of course. Making bread is easy when you have a mixer with a dough hook, it literally makes itself, and so I make batches of dough reasonably often. The same batch of dough can become many things: pita, pizza, lahmucun, bread rolls. This time, it became a sausage flatbread. Continue reading

Those of you who know and love Turkish food will find this flatbread familiar. You might have even thought that it is lahmucun. It does look very like it and for good reason, it was directly inspired by it. In fact I started making lahmucun and then diverted to this. That is generally how it goes in my kitchen.

I love lahmucun, a wonderful very thin Turkish flatbread covered with spiced meat, usually lamb, and baked until crisp. I used to live near Green Lanes in London for a few years, a 7 mile strip of street that is packed with Turkish restaurants. If you want to explore proper Turkish food culture, and you want Londons best kebabs, this is the part of London you should head to (Dalston also). Are you still here?

When I would head out to do my groceries, I would often indulge in a lahmucun. £1.30 was the princely sum for a takeaway one from one of my favourites there, Antepliler. I would stand at the till and watch while they would fill it with salad and roll it, wrapped in paper. They were divine. Manti also in a little Turkish cafe neary, those gorgeous tiny Turkish filled pasta served with yogurt. Before fermentation was a thing – what I mean is before Hackney discovered it – I found wild garlic kefir there, fermented vegetable drinks, and all sorts of other things. Treat yourself if you are in London and go explore. Make sure you pop into Yasar Halim when you do, a terrific local Turkish grocers and bakery, as well as Antepliler. Continue reading

Hey, it is PI day! What? Pie week and now pi day? Pi Day is a day to celebrate maths (and maths in nature and in food is a beautiful thing, so I am all over that). It is also a perfect day to share another pie recipe. (And yes, pi is that number 3.14159265).

As with pi not being an actual pie, this is not just any other pie. (Bear with me). This pie is gorgeous. Every recipe I share with you here has to be worth it, something that brings a ray of sunshine to your table and cheers your day. It has to be something that I loved and this is particularly deserving.

I try with bananas. I buy them and then I leave them there and next thing I know they are brown. Very brown. Almost oozing out of the skin. Collapsing with sweetness. Bananas in the supermarket are never ripe, so you have to wait and then, kabam, too late they are gone! No longer great for eating but nectar sweet and perfect for pancakes and baking. Continue reading

Potato pizza. Yes! It is a thing. And yes, it is wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! (Twirls!). I first had it on my first trip to Rome at an innocent 19. I was to discover pizza a tavola and gelato and I would speed from a tiny size 6 (US size 2) to a still small but bigger size 10 that summer. The die was cast. I wish I had such problems now!

I was living in Nice for the summer, and it was only my second time outside of Ireland. I already knew I wanted to travel a lot, and I really have no idea why I picked Nice as a place to start, but that is where I went. I think I chose France because I spoke French, and I was curious after 6 years of studying it. Nice is lovely, that long beach, the wonderful light. So hot, too hot for me. When I first arrived and didn’t put sunscreen on the side of my feet I learned the hard way with third degree burns on the second day. I could hardly walk. It was a mesmerising time. I was startled by large lizards clambering over an imposing wooden gate protecting the entrance to a house bigger than I had seen before. I loved the packed terraces full of people eating and drinking, and I was entranced by all of the new foods and the lovely little towns nearby.

It was a coming of age summer for me in many ways. It was my first proper summer away from Ireland, learning a lot about myself, good and bad. I spoke French, but was nervous to in the beginning, so lots assumed I couldn’t. It is amazing what people would say when they thought I couldn’t understand. I met lots of people, I trusted everyone, I learned that maybe I shouldn’t. But I also met some terrific people too who inspired me and made me think about how wonderful and large the world could be, and how much I wanted to explore it. I worked hard, and everytime I got to 1000 francs (about £120 at the time), I saved it as a travellers cheque.

I had a tiny studio apartment off the Promenade des Anglais with a friend, a 2 minute walk from the sea, right in the heart of it all. I was discovering food, and I popped down to a local sandwich stall often to have a toasted baguette with hot chicken curry inside. I loved it! That summer I had my first coffee when I learned that a hot chocolate at 35 deg C was a not too pleasant experience. And we all know how that went.

Fuzzy flashback to that summer in Nice – one of the rare photos that I have from that time

When the weather changed there at the end of August as I had been told it would (and it was incredibly predictable to the day then, some winds came and it got colder, and it seemed like everyone left), I packed my bags and my saved travellers cheques and I booked a one way train to Florence. I didn’t love it then. As a young solo female traveller I got a lot of grief from creepy guys, and so I took myself to Rome. Rome was bigger and easier and gorgeous. I fell in love with it. Rome became the kind of city that I started to seek out. A city that is thriving, beating and bursting, a city that knows you are there but isn’t really bothered as it is just getting on with everything that makes it so good. I stayed for almost 10 days and burned through some of my hard earned summer savings. I spent all day walking and luxuriating in how gorgeous the city was, stopping to sit for gelato and pizza every now and then, more impressed by the seemingly abandoned gorgeousness on every street and street corner than the packed tourist spots.

Rome! Photos from my last trip there.

I have such fond recollections of that time. It was my first time travelling solo, which I do all the time now. Potato pizza is the thing that I remember the most. Sometimes with potato matchsticks and other times with potato slices, sometimes with just potato, sometimes with cheese, sometimes with some herbs. Always good. Served from tavola caldas (hot tables), the pizza are served by the slice from enormous rectangular versions, cut with a scissors into the size you desired. I couldn’t believe it. A POTATO PIZZA?! I was sold. I have been making them at home since, and when I go to Rome now, it is the thing I want more than anything. Well, almost as much as Bonci’s porchetta sandwich, but that is a story for another time.

In Rome, the best of these pizzas is served on pizza bianca, a pizza that is made first with toppings added after, and then heated to order. Pizzarium and Bonci (both owned by Gabriele Bonci, mentioned already, both are a must in Rome) are the gold standard for these. I use my standard pizza base at home, and I use mozzarella as a milky buffer between the base and the potato. I have a weakness for buffalo mozzarella (the real Mozzarella di Bufala Campana which is made in Southern Italy and protected by PDO particularly), but if you can get a proper fior de latte, a good cows mozzarella made with cows milk, that is superb too. I love the romance of Italian descriptors for food, to describe a cheese as the flower of milk is just gorgeous. Taleggio works brilliantly too, so feel free to use that also.

Time for the potato, and on top of the cheese I layer sliced potatoes. When I started out they were painstakingly sliced by hand, as thin as I could. Now I use my food processor, but a mandolin is perfect too. One large potato does two pizzas, a potato pizza is a frugal joyful thing. Occasionally I like to squeeze in a couple of layers of fine guanciale slices for an extra layer of dizzying indulgence. If guanciale is not on your radar yet, it is a bacon made from the jowl of the pig (the cheek and surrounds) and it is one of the best ones. You can get it in great Italian delis and Fortnum and Mason stock a terrific one from Peter Hannon in Northern Ireland, already sliced fine and perfect for this pizza.

I hope that you will indulge in this Roman slice of gorgeousness. It brings me much happiness. Enjoy!

Yield: makes 2 pizzas, with 4 extra bases for another time (there is always another time!)

Ingredients

dough (for 6 pizzas)

450g strong flour

10g dried yeast

300ml just warm water

25ml extra virgin olive oil

a generous pinch of sea salt

toppings (per 2 pizzas - which is what I usually make, but triple to make 6)

1 large potato, peeled and sliced into thin rounds

250 g ball mozzarella (I prefer buffalo)

one tbsp of rosemary needles, stems discarded

6 thin slices of guanciale or pancetta (or streaky bacon!)

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and black pepper

Instructions

The dough will make enough for 6 pizzas. I usually make 2 and then I freeze the extra bases (which I stretch out into circles) between layers of greaseproof paper, ready to top another time.

Make your dough. Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and add the oil. Add the water a little at a time, mixing it through. When the flour has come together to a ball there is enough water. Add more a little at a time if you need it (each brand of flour is a little different). if it gets too wet just add a little more flour. Knead for 10 minutes or 5 minutes if you have a mixer with a dough hook. Cover with cling film and let it rise slowly in the fridge overnight or let it rise in the warmest part of your kitchen until it has doubled in size (about 40 minutes to an hour). Knock the dough back by literally knocking the wind out of it, and let it rise again for another 10 minutes at room temperature. It is now ready to use.

Preheat your oven to its highest heat.

Divide the dough into 6 balls and using your hands, gently shape it into a circle. I like it when it isn’t too thin, liking it to be approaching foccacia but not quite. You should have yours as thin as you like it. If you find hand shaping awkward you can use a rolling pin.

Put the dough on a floured or oiled baking tray and put half the mozzarella on top of each pizza base. It is easiest to tear it with your hands, making sure it is evenly distributed. On top of this layer the potato slices. This will depend on how big your potato slices are and how bit your pizza base is (aka how thin you like your crust) but every two lines of potato slices, I tucked in some guanciale. Scatter the rosemary and season lightly with sea salt which the potatoes will need but the guanciale won't, as it is salted already. Finish with freshly ground black pepper (it wouldn't be Roman without it) and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Roast in the oven for 5 - 8 minutes. This depends on how hot your oven goes. Keep an eye on it after five. They pizza is done when the dough is starting to brown, as are the potatoes, and when the base is crisp.

I like to cook in batches. Even though I am generally cooking for just one or two. Some stuff just makes sense that way: big pots of stock, beans, a roast hunk of meat that can become 4 dishes in the day after, pizza. One big bowl of dough will keep well if you let it rise gently overnight in the fridge. And you can eat it for every meal that day. And you really can, you know? Or you can have a pizza party.

This morning as I looked at the bowl of dough that I had just retrieved from the fridge I was thinking, oh yes, egg & lardo pizza. Because you know those are two of my very favourite things. I quite like to cover my egg yolks with lardo anyway. And I have lardo in the fridge. (Lardo? Cured gorgeous pork fat, mouth melting and divine. Not lard. Which is also great but for different reasons). But I have something even better too. Guanciale! Roman cheek bacon, the very best bacon there is. I consider myself an expert after all the testing that I did for my next book Project Bacon (which is in the final stages, and I know I have said that before but it really is).

I didn’t have a meat slicer (and oh how I want one!), and what I really wanted was a thin sheet of guanciale, rich with fat and weak with a quiver of pink meat. It would protect and coat the egg as it roasted in the most gorgeous way possible. It drives me crazy when an egg on a pizza hardens and blisters as it roasts. I tried my food processor and it did well enough. All systems go, pizza for breakfast was going to be a thing.

I am lucky, I have gorgeous Roman tomatoes, bursting with ripeness. If they could speak they would be exuberant and you might not want to sit next to them, but as a tomato they are a perfect thing. Chopped into large enough dice so that they still had personality and texture and shape, they were the first layer on my breakfast pizza. Thrown cautiously over a carefully teased piece of dough, shaped into a careless circle with my fingers. On top, a little chopped fresh rosemary. I cracked an egg into the centre where there was enough of a lack of tomatoes to hold an egg, with a wall of tomatoes around it. On top, three carefully placed slices of guanciale joy.

Into the oven at its highest setting, and about 6 minutes later there it was. My perfect breakfast pizza, bacon and egg at its most joyful. You must make it. I promise it is worth making the dough. Have a breakfast pizza party!

1 good tomato, chopped into dice or a couple of tablespoons of good tomato passata

a little fresh rosemary or thyme

three thin slices of guanciale, bacon or lardo

1 egg

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt

black pepper

Instructions

Make your dough. Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and add the oil. Add the water a little at a time, mixing it through. When the flour has come together to a ball there is enough water. Add more a little at a time if you need it (each brand of flour is a little different). if it gets too wet just add a little more flour. Knead for 10 minutes or 5 minutes if you have a mixer with a dough hook. Cover with cling film and let it rise slowly in the fridge overnight or let it rise in the warmest part of your kitchen until it has doubled in size (about 40 minutes to an hour). Knock the dough back by literally knocking the wind out of it, and let it rise again for another 10 minutes at room temperature. It is now ready to use.

Preheat your oven to its highest heat.

Divide the dough into 6 balls and using your hands, gently shape it into a circle. I like it when it isn’t too thin, liking it to be approaching foccacia but not quite. You should have yours as thin as you like it. If you find hand shaping awkward you can use a rolling pin.

Put the dough on a floured or oiled baking tray and add the tomatoes, making sure there is room for an egg in the middle. Season the pizza at this point (the bacon will have enough salt. Sprinkle on the rosemary and crack the egg on top. Carefully put the guanciale or lardo or bacon over the egg, making sure the yolk is covered. Drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil on top and sprinkle with some black pepper.

I wouldn’t say that I am bloodthirsty. Sure, I like my steak rare, and I can deal with the sight of blood. But sometimes I get upset when I don’t see any, in my blood oranges at least. I was slicing through a batch yesterday, perpetually disappointed to see only occasionally blushes and not enough rushing red. So annoyed was I that I accidentally cut through my own finger in my rush, and yes, there was blood, but not the kind of blood that I was hoping for.

I was on a mission. I love Italian polenta and almond cakes. I had a slice for the first time in Gelupo in London not long after it first opened and it stopped me in my tracks. Literally, I was eating it on the run (it was that kind of day), and I stopped and looked at that simple cake and thought about what a surprise it was. So understated to look at, but bursting with flavour beneath. My kind of flavours, not too sweet and a little crumbly. This is a perfect breakfast cake. It made the cut in my first book as a kind of a muffin. Italians love to have cake for breakfast and they do everything else right so why not?! I have embraced it.

Last week, I spotted a gorgeous version that Kellie from Food to Glow had cooked, an upside down blood orange polenta cake. It got me thinking. I still had wonderful IGP hazelnuts from my last trip to Piedmont that I needed to use. I had a wonderful coarse bright yellow polenta that I had bought in an Italian deli in town. And I had some blood oranges.

This cake is dairy free and gluten free too. Sometimes I mix in some plain flour too to make it a little softer but it isn’t essential and the stoneground polenta I used gave it a brilliant flavour and a coarsely textured crumb which worked very well. Each way is very palatable, go with flour if you fancy something a little less coarse and a bit cake-ier (substitute 75g plain flour for 50g polenta).

3 oranges - the rind and juice of 2 for the cake, the remaining sliced with the rind & pith removed

juice of half a lemon

one cake tin approx 20cm or 7/8 inches

greaseproof paper / baking parchment

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180 deg C.

Mix the oil and the sugar well.

Add the rest of the ingredients, excluding the orange slices for the top of the cake, and mix very well. I use a mixer but a wooden spoon and elbow grease would work very well too. You will end with a wet grainy batter.

Prepare your orange slices by removing the skin and pith with a sharp knife and slicing into narrow slices.

Line your tin with greaseproof paper and arrange the orange slices in a layer.

Pour the batter on top (give it a good mix before you pour it in) and bake it for 35 - 40 minutes until the top is set and gives only a little when you push on it. Don't worry if it has risen unevenly, it will relax as it cools.

Allow to cool and serve sliced with a light dusting of icing sugar on top.

I was thinking of Scandinavia when I made this. Their love for cardamom in their pastries, and blueberries which are plentiful when in season. I adore cardamom too, spice generally, and knowing how much blueberry and cardamom love each other, I wanted to make something bright and delicious to help my February sing. It is a short month, but at times it feels like the longest of the year. We are teased with bright blue skies, and spring is near.

I was also thinking of my lovely rhubarb and rose pistachio frangipane tart which I made last year. These are siblings. Alike but still very different, coming from the same place but each choosing a different path.

The joy of this tart lies not just in the flavours but also in its simplicity. It takes little effort with shop bought pastry, and you end up speedily with a gorgeous tart. A bright swift remedy for dark days or nights that demand it. This is packed with joy and speed and simplicity. Enjoy! And if you make it, let me know how it went here or share it with me on twitter or instagram using the hashtag #EatLikeAGirl.

8 cardamom pods, split with seeds removed and ground to a powder in a pestle & mortar

blueberries

200g fresh blueberries and extra to serve (if you like)

pastry

1 sheet of puff pastry approx 30cm x 20cm and a tray that will accommodate it (shop bought is fine)

1 egg

to serve

2 tbsp icing sugar (confectioners sugar), to serve

Instructions

First make your frangipane by mixing the butter, almonds, ground cardamom and sugar until you form a well combined paste. Add the egg and mix it in. Cover and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 200 deg C. Butter or lightly oil your baking tray and place the pastry sheet on it. Using a sharp knife score the pastry an inch in, the whole way around, creating a border, like a picture frame. Don't cut right through the pastry. Beat the egg, and using a pastry brush or teaspoon, egg wash the border only (brush with the egg). This will ensure it is lovely and golden when baked.

Spread the frangipane evenly over the pastry centre, keeping the inch border free. Stud the frangipane with the blueberries, pushing them gently in. Bake until golden and risen. You want the frangipane to be starting to brown but not actually brown. This should take 20 - 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Dust with icing sugar (put the icing sugar in a sieve and pass over it). Eats well warm or cold, with extra blueberries if you like!

More chocolate and more spices. I just can’t get enough. And another post so quickly after the last one, but I really wanted you to have this for Christmas.

Before we begin, cast aside any ideas about a traditional cinnamon roll recipe that you might have. Their dough is firm and easily manipulated, and yes, they are a joy. But these are different. These are based loosely on the idea of a Swedish kanelbullar (Swedish cinnamon roll) but the dough is very loose and very sticky, so that the buns will be gorgeously soft.

I have been playing around with cinnamon rolls for some time now, and I wondered what a chocolate one might be like. I pushed the dough until it was as loose and as sticky as it could be to yield a soft bun when cooked. It also makes them so easy to put together. I chose cardamom over cinnamon, because I love the chocolate and cardamom combination, and felt cinnamon did not need to be involved.

These are simple, and not too sweet. They are very messy too, but this is a little liberating. When the dough is ready, you just slap it out, and squish it, spread the butter, gently roll and slice. They are wonderful fresh out of the oven, but like all pastries of this type, they fade and toughen up fast. The best thing to do is eat the ones you want on the day, and once cool immediately freeze all of the others, bringing them back to life in a medium oven when you want one. They won’t be quite the same as fresh, but they will be better than most from the shop.

I topped these with a very simple runny ganache which works very well, especially when the buns are hot. I had planned to make a cream cheese icing to go on top, with maple and rum and candied clementines. Lets save that for next time, it is too good not to appear here. For now, we will stick with chocolate, which is perfect in its own way.

Method

Heat the milk and butter in the same pan until it is just comfortable to put your finger in it, neither hot nor cold, body temperature. Any hotter and the milk will kill the yeast.

Combine the flour, dried yeast and cocoa. Create a well in the centre and add the milk and butter mixture, and the egg, mixing with the flour as you do. Mix well in the bowl (you can do all of this in a mixer too).

Leave the dough to rise in a warm part of your kitchen or your home. While the dough is rising, prepare the spiced butter filling. Lightly bash the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar, remove the seeds and discard the pods, then grind the seeds as fine as you can. Add the sugar to this, and grind gently. Empty the spiced sugar into a bowl and mix well with the butter so that it is soft and pliable.

When the dough has doubled in size (this should take no longer than an hour), knock the dough back, knocking any air out. Lightly oil the surface that you plan to shape the rolls on and turn the tough on to it. Flatten the dough out until it is about 45 cm long and 3o cm deep.

Spread the spiced butter evenly over the dough and sprinkle the chocolate over it. Gently roll the chocolate dough, as you would for a swiss roll. Don’t worry if it is very squishy. Cut into 14 equal pieces, gently pulling them apart to expose the layers, as you lay them flat. Arrange the buns with 7 in each tin, 6 in a circle and one in the middle.

Preheat your oven to 200 deg C. Allow the buns to rest and rise for half an hour, then bake for 15 minutes. They will be done when the top is crisp. Some of the spiced sugar and chocolate will have settled and caramelised at the bottom, making them gorgeously sticky.

When the buns are done, prepare the ganache. Heat the cream in a pan until it is hot but not boiling. Take off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring through until melted. Drizzle over the buns, and pull apart to eat.

This year has definitely heralded the arrival of a sweeter tooth than what I have had before. I was never that bothered. I enjoyed the occasional cake, and complete surrender to some rhubarb and custard haribo, but if I was ever craving anything, it was usually composed of salt and probably fat.

I have always liked chocolate though. Chocolate is savoury first and foremost, with a layer of sweet on top. It is the gateway sweet for any savoury person. I was in Grenada earlier this year and I checked in an extra suitcase, mainly for chocolate, cocoa nibs, pure cocoa, cocoa butter and nutmeg. I keep it in an airtight box which I visit every now and then when I have a craving that needs to be satisfied or an idea that needs to be executed. Chocolate is so satisfying that I am happy after I have had my fill.

All week long I have been thinking of combining some of my Grenada cocoa and cocoa nibs with some lovely hazelnuts that I brought back from Piedmont, and that I need to use. Chocolate and hazelnut are a familiar and excellent combination. You know nutella of course, that deeply addictive chocolate spread based on gianduja from Northern Italy, a combination of hazelnut paste and chocolate. Nutella was originally called Pasta Gianduja. I make my own chocolate peanut butter at home, and my own riff on nutella too. Most recently, I made these gorgeous little cakes based on the same flavour profile.

If you love nutella, you won’t be able to get enough of these.

For intolerances or allergies – you can comfortably substitute coconut oil for butter here, for gluten free you can substitute rice flour or a gluten free flour of your choice, as the gluten isn’t key here.

Melt the butter (or coconut oil) and add to the dry ingredients. Add the egg whites and stir through.

Fill tin until just below the top. There is no raising agent in this recipe but they will rise a bit.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until a skewer comes out dry when you test it.

Allow to cool before removing very carefully.

Melt the butter and the sugar and leave over a medium heat for a few minutes taking care not to burn it. Add the cocoa nibs or hazelnuts and stir until full coated. In a separate pan over a low heat melt the butter for the chocolate butter, then add the chocolate and remove from the heat. Stir until it has melted in.

Serve the cakes warm with some chocolate butter spooned on top and some cocoa nibs.

I love potatoes. They are just the best thing. I have always been a fan, as a child I had a phase where I would eat nothing else, and I have found a myriad of things to do with them since. I grew up surrounded by potato fields and we would collect the unwanted baby ones to make things with at home. Now of course they are trendy and more expensive than the bigger ones. Life is a funny thing.

My potato joy expanded when I discovered that there were more types than just the potato that grew in the field behind my house. There were waxy and floury, red skinned and blue fleshed. There are even yellow fleshed potatoes from Peru. Of course all potatoes are from Peru originally, but you know.

Occasionally I can get my mitts on purple potatoes at my farmers market. They used to be at the supermarket too but I guess maybe I was the only person buying them as they don’t sell them anymore. It is hard to beat a purple potato, both for visuals and flavour. They have wonderful sweet rich flesh (although nowhere near as sweet as a sweet potato, they are still quite savoury too).

I have made crisps with them before (I love crisps), and served them with a chilli mayo dip. This time I went the hasselback route, cutting the potato into thin long wedges and roasting until crisp. Increasing the surface area this way not only looks superb, but it tastes great too. Especially when you baste them with butter relentlessly. And I did. They also look a lot more complex than they are. They are just potatoes that are not quite sliced through, and carefully.

Of course you can use normal white potatoes and they will be just as good, but do keep an eye peeled for the purple ones just to try them. They are addictive and I think would be perfect for Halloween too, no?

Prepare your potatoes by slicing them with a sharp knife not quite through to the end every 3mm or so.

Grease a baking tray and place the potatoes in. Divide the butter in 5 and firmly squish one fifth on top of each potato. Leave the remaining to the side. Sprinkle with sea salt and some of the pepper.

Put in the oven for 20 minutes, after which you should baste the potatoes with the melted butter, and continue to do this every 20 minutes. They should be finished after 60 minutes but this will depend on the size of your potatoes. They will be done when nice and crisp on top and soft within (test with your sharp knife gently).

While the potatoes are cooking, in a separate oven proof dish add the remaining butter, chorizo, chilli, pumpkin, thyme and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Mix well and put in the oven once the potatoes have been in a half an hour or so. Take them out after 10 minutes and give them a good stir. These should be cooked (when the pumpkin is tender), once the potatoes are done. If done before the potatoes, remove them and put back in the oven for 5 minutes before serving.

Serve when done with a quarter of the cheese on each and the chorizo and pumpkin mix.

It was one of those mornings. I was out of eggs – what, how could I let that happen?! – and out of coffee beans. I was staring glumly at a bag of Moomin coffee, a hasty Helsinki airport purchase, and wondering how nasty that might be and what I could have for breakfast. On my counter were some very brown bananas, barely a patch of yellow left. I had some buckwheat flour, but not a lot, and a bag of hazelnuts. I thought I might try a new take on banana bread.

It is worth buying bananas and letting them go really brown to make banana bread and pancakes. This is when they are at their best for cooking, rich and syrupy sweet. I never do this intentionally. I buy bananas and let them sit on the side. I feel guilty when I see them every day. I worry about waste, and then eventually they go completely brown, and they become banana bread or pancakes.

I love the flavour of buckwheat, I use it a lot. For pancakes, waffles, bread and now banana bread, the nutty flavour goes very well with the bananas here. It is gluten free as it isn’t actually a wheat, and as I used coconut oil too, this bread is dairy free also.

A quick word on coconut oil, I know it is being heralded as a new discovery and superfood, but you know, in Asia they have been using this forever, and in Asian shops it is very easy to buy, and much cheaper too (ok, so it isn’t extra virgin, but you know). Often in bottles, which in Asia wouldn’t be a problem as it being warm, the oil would be liquid. Here, I put mine in a pot of hot water so that it melts a bit and I can pour it. You can get jars too.

Once I discovered that coconut oil was a good butter substitute (I am lactose intolerant so I must take care), I started using it for fruit curds and in cakes that demanded to be dairy free. Texturally it is similar, unlike oils, and so it works very well. I should really share my lactose free life hacks with you some day. I have many! Of course you can use butter instead, if you prefer. Buttery bananas are good.

Lets crack on with the recipe, shall we? This banana bread is dense and fruity with nutty pops of hazelnut. It didn’t last a day in my flat, and I ate most of it. I am going to make more this weekend.

Enjoy – recipes now have their own page in my new website design, so that you can save and print the recipe on its own. PDF downloads are coming soon too. Both reader requests, and good onse I think! Let me know if there are any bugbears or things that you would like to see changed too!

one loaf tin, I actually used a pie dish as I couldn’t find my loaf tin :)

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 deg C.
Mash the bananas and mix in the sugar and coconut oil. Beat with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Add buckwheat flour, a pinch of salt and vanilla and mix through until you get a well blended batter.
Stir through the hazelnuts and spread he batter into your greased tin.
Bake until a skewer comes out dry when the cake is pierced with it. Mine took 30 minutes, keep an eye on it from 25.
Lovely as is, hot, cold or toasted.
Enjoy!

Sweet! I want something sweet! And full of sunshine. I can no longer take the grey, grey sky that hangs so low over my head.

Friands remind me of Australia. Bright blue skys, rolling frothy seas, cliff walks, great breakfasts, and all of their wonderful cafés. We have many great Australian cafés in London now too, and the friands are popping up, but like everything, you really can’t beat making them at home. They are so simple and take a maximum of 10 minutes to prepare, and 12 – 15 minutes to bake. You will be stuffing your face with friands in no time, and your biggest problem will be trying not to eat them all.

I love a friand but I don’t need twenty of them squeaking at me from the kitchen – eat me! eat me! eat me! – 6 is too many but it is the least you can make so make sure that you can share them with someone, or some colleagues. Maybe you are not like me and have some self control, but I know that if there are 6 in the kitchen, then I can and will eat 6 of them. I will start with one, have a second, contemplate a guilty third, and from then on it is pure trauma as I try to battle their sirens call.

The recipe is simple. Based on the French financier, but using only egg white (which makes them so light), the friand is composed only of butter, sugar, egg white, flour and ground almonds with the fruit of your choice. I chose mango and lime today as there was the most gorgeous mangoes flirting with me from outside the window of my local Caribbean butcher. Divine. Lime gives it the perk it needs, and gives me that gentle hint of invisible sunshine, which I really need right now.

Friand tins can be hard to come by, use a muffin or fairy cake (cupcake) tin if you don’t have one. A financier tin will do nicely too.

Can’t eat dairy? Don’t worry! I tested a dairy free version too. It is super simple, just substitute the same amount of coconut oil for the butter, and the results are great. It would be very easy to make these gluten free too, as there is such a tiny amount of flour in there. Substitute the plain flour with the gluten free flour of your choice and off you go.

I am up to my eyes in bacon boxes, book writing and other work, so today I must be brief. Rather than disappear as I have done when very busy lately, I will write briefer posts and today, I will share with you one of my favourite indulgent recipes, my recipe for boozy raspberry chocolate brownies.

If you are afraid of baking, this is the recipe for you. So easy, and very delicious, this rich dark chocolate batter, spiked with pops of bright juicy raspberry is virtually impossible to screw up. I promise you. It also tastes like it was much harder work. The perfect recipe?

I am not an obsessive baker. Certainly not in the sweet sense. I love salt, broth, tender meat, spritely vegetables and all the other things that make savoury sing. I have always loved confectionery, especially making it, and I am partial to a lemon meringue pie, victoria sponge, swiss roll and lots of old school classics, but that was it when it came to home baking. I simply wasn’t all that inspired to explore beyond that. I was happy with my salt.

Then something changed. In the last few months I have developed a sweet tooth (which sits nicely next to my very happy salty one). In fact, I think that all of my teeth might be salty, and now there is one shiny sweet tooth in the mix.

And then there is rhubarb. Lovely pink tender rhubarb. Slender and elegant, the rhubarb of January in the UK is Yorkshire forced rhubarb (also called champagne rhubarb), grown in the dark in long sheds in the Yorkshire rhubarb triangle, and harvested by candlelight (it is an old Victorian technique). It spends a lifetime stretching for the light but never reaching it, trapped beneath the terracotta urn that houses it. Yorkshire rhubarb brightens January, and I always look forward to it.

Rhubarb, Pistachio & Rose Frangipane Tart (Recipe)

Rhubarb goes beautifully with pistachio and rose and I was recently reminded just how much I love simple frangipane when I baked David Lebovitz lovely Galette des Rois. Frangipane is a simple almond cream, made with ground almonds, egg, butter, sugar and aromatics (rum and almond extract for example), but it can also be made with ground pistachios, and in this case, rosewater.

I made this 5 times before I was happy with it. Or was that just an excuse to eat this gorgeous tart all week long?! I didn’t bother making pastry as puff pastry is such a faff and it is fairly easy to get all butter pre made puff pastry now, but I did play with frangipane to get it just so, and also the rhubarb, being oh so tender and slight, didn’t work pre-poached as it just fell to bits while roasting. So, I tried poaching, poaching so lightly in syrup before trying the very simple solution of putting the rhubarb on to the tart raw. Perfect. It doesn’t need extra sugar as there is plenty in the frangipane which will rise up around it.

It is very important that you score the tart edges properly and try not to get the frangipane on or over the lines, I am clumsy and so did. But, learn from my mistakes. You may not use all of your frangipane either but why not make a couple of smaller hand pie size tarts on the side?

Enjoy! It is very more-ish.

Recipe: Rhubarb, Pistachio & Rose Frangipane Tart

Serves 9 – 12 depending on how big you slice it

Ingredientsffdd

350g rhubarb, washed and cut into 2 inch lengths, halved lengthwise if thick
1 sheet of all butter puff pastry approx 30cm x 20cm and a tray that will accommodate it
1 egg beaten to egg wash the edges

Make your frangipane first. Using a food processor or blender, grind the pistachios to fine crumbs. Add the butter, sugar, rosewater and vanilla and mix well (very easy in a food processor but you can do it by hand too). Add your egg and incorporate it fully. Store in the fridge for at least 15 minutes while you prepare the rest of the tart.

Prepare your rhubarb. Grease a tray that will accommodate your pastry sheet with butter and put the sheet on top of it. Using a sharp knife, cut a line one inch from the edge of the pastry all around it, taking care to cut almost but not completely through (this will allow the edge to rise). Prick the centre every now and then with a fork.

Spread a thin layer of frangipane within the scored lines – you will notice I missed a few bits in my photo and my tart did suffer – any overlap will form an ugly frangipane crust on the edges.

Layer the rhubarb on top and place in the oven for 25 – 30 minutes, when the edges will be risen and golden and the frangipane puffed up. Remove from the tray and leave to cool on a cooling rack. The tart will relax and become flatter.

I never even heard of toad in the hole as a child. I may have heard it referred to but I always thought that it referred to Toad of Toad Hall of The Wind in the Willows. I was quite surprised to discover it was a joyous and simple concoction of sausages roasted in Yorkshire batter. It is a favourite now, especially for one the days start closing in in Autumn and Winter.

How to Make the Perfect Toad in the Hole

My recipe for this is very simple but there is are caveats

– it is very important to allow the batter to rest once you have made it, for at least an hour, or overnight

– cook the batter from room temperature for best results. If resting in the fridge overnight allow the batter to come to room temperature before you bake it.

– for best results and a perfect rise, it is best to preheat the tin also.

This recipe makes enough for two individual toads with two sausages each. Or if cooking for one as I was, enough for one toady and a big Yorkshire pudding for later. I often cook for one, almost always. I choose to cook because I enjoy it, it helps me relax and remove myself from the days stresses, and the results are delicious. I cook for pleasure, during and after. And the anticipation!

Alternative toads: I have also made this with the cocktail cooking chorizo sausages in a muffin tray. They were so cute I half wanted to tuck them up in bed instead of eating them. Chunks of pumpkin in place of sausages also works well as a toad alternative, even better, wrap the pumpkin in bacon.

Whisk together the salt, egg, milk and flour until there is no lumps and leave covered at room temperature for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 200 deg C and lightly roast the sausages in a little oil / fat until they are starting to brown.

Remove the sausages and add more fat, it should cover the whole of the bottom of the pan (or you won't get a nice crisp bottom). Heat in the oven then add the sausages and pour in the batter until it comes half way up the sausages. If you are not making two toads, pour the leftover batter in another small tin with fat to cook a Yorkshire pudding. You won't regret it!

Roast for 20 minutes, in which time the pastry will puff up and crisp.

As with most children, I was a fan of cake. All kinds of cake, except coffee cake. That, to me, was a filthy abomination. I mean WHY would anyone put coffee in a cake, especially for children? I couldn’t understand it. Cake was a place for jam, cream, ice cream, lemon curd, chocolate, lots of things, but definitely not for coffee. (I get it now before you try to persuade me I should try it :)

When I heard that we would be making banana bread in school, I thought that we were progressing down a similar path. We had cooked mackerel, and I was starting to become suspicious that perhaps Home Economics would not be fun after all. Despite growing up almost on the Atlantic shore, as a child I hated fish. Or, at least I thought I did. So, mackerel, then banana bread, I was losing faith.

What does banana bread even mean anyway? It isn’t really a bread, there is no yeast or rising process, but then there isn’t for soda bread either. It is made with baking powder, sugar, eggs, bananas, flour. Doesn’t that sound like a cake? But it really isn’t one is it? It can be light or heavy, depending on personal preference, but it is sweet and fruity. I was converted immediately. For me, banana bread is a delicious confusion, and I think I have improved it a step here with my twist.

Stepping back a little bit again – I should explain that I have been travelling for over 24 hours and am writing my mini banana bread missive from Kyoto so forgive me when I inevitably ramble, as I am – banana bread was brought back to the forefront of my consciousness when I visited Vancouver. It was everywhere, and in many variations. They love it.

Then more recently, in the Caribbean, I started thinking about the versatility of banana as an ingredient, and I have quite a few new recipes for you now that I developed last week, although I will spread them out over the next few months for I have no desire for this to become a banana blog, that would be a different thing altogether. I could call it bananas for bananas or something similar, but I won’t.

Back to my banana bread. I love coconut as an ingredient too. Occasionally fresh when I have the patience, and maybe a hammer, more often I use coconut milk or coconut cream, and occasionally dessicated coconut. Coconut oil is a great cooking oil which I use a lot too, and it is a decent substitute for butter in baking when you are cooking for somebody that can’t eat it. I have a curd recipe which includes it, I really must blog it here. Lime goes especially well with it, as does banana. It was a no brainer really.

I used a punchy little wrinkly lime from my local Indian shop. It had such sweet strong perfume, if you are in London, seek them out. If you can’t get them, don’t worry, a normal lime will do, just be sure to get a good one, as you don’t want waxed rind in your lovely bread. Dessicated coconut gives extra coconut flavour and texture and also lightens the crumb.

I hope you like it as much as I do. It is nice and light and zingy. Dairy free too!

Banana, Coconut & Lime Bread

Recipe: Banana, Coconut & Lime Bread

Ingredients

400g ripe bananas (over ripe work very well too)
juice and zest of 1 lime
160ml coconut cream (the small tins not the solid block, alternatively use the thickest part of a tin of coconut milk that has been allowed to separate by not agitating it)
100g dessicated coconut
200g flour
3 tsp baking powder
175g light brown sugar
generous pinch of sea salt
3 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 170 deg C.
Whisk the eggs and sugar until they increase in volume and get a little creamier and thicker.
Sift the flour and baking powder. Mash the banana and mix with the flour, baking powder, and all remaining ingredients.
Pour into your prepared tin and bake until a skewer or knife comes out dry when pierced through. This will depend on whether you bake a shallow or deep cake but will take 55 – 60 minutes.

Hello! I’m Niamh (Knee-uv! It’s Irish). I love to cook and share my recipes here for you to recreate in your kitchen. Everything I make is packed with flavour and easy to recreate. I aim to be your friend in the kitchen and to bring the flavours of the world to you. Come cook with me!